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Could be a very close game. Poms middle order is the key here. If 1 of Stokes ,Buttler or Bairstow bats for a session the rate they bat they put England ahead if they bat at their normal rate. But if India can keep things tight , they will pick up wickets.

India couldn't chase around 200 against Rabada/Steyn/MorkelPhilander in SA. Conditions were far tougher albeit with bounce. India's problem is not pace here. Just the off stump channel where there are some judgement issues. They just have to find a way like standing outside the crease. Once they see off that passage they can fancy themselves to chase 200 here.

will England collapse in second innings

Looking at their pattern , how many think this will happen . I personally feel that they will get rolled over for 160. Root is mentally destroyed after what kohli did and cook is officially Ash’s bunny

England will win with a 260 lead, but if India are chasing 220 or under then they might squeak over the line.

There was a phase in the first innings where every single ball looked like getting a wicket. We only have 10 wickets If India goes through that phase again it will be a tough long ordeal. For that to happen clouds have to stay away. Sun should be baking the pitch.

England’s newly appointed vice-captain went to hospital this afternoon after injuring his finger on the second day of England’s first Test with India.

Buttler picked up the injury in the field, diving to his left at gully attempting to take what would have been a spectacular catch to dismiss Virat Kohli.

Dom Bess has taken Buttler's place in the field Dom Bess has taken Buttler's place in the field
The ECB confirmed the injury, saying that Buttler had travelled to a local hospital near Edgbaston to have the x-ray. Dom Bess, who made his debut in England’s last Test series against Pakistan earlier in the summer, has been on the field in his absence.

During Tea, England's management confirmed that there was no fracture, but that Buttler is unlikely to return today, and will continue to ice the injury.

England will probably be getting the best batting conditions of this Test. As soon as they touch 250, India will find it difficult to save this match

I think Eng will win. Putting 250 in 3rd inning should be much easier than chasing 250 in 4th inning. Eng may not do that well, but they have a long batting line up. 1-2 batsmen need to score to get to 250.

"If this happens I will swim across the Charles River! In winter!" -- OZGOD on NZ batting 6 sessions

England’s newly appointed vice-captain went to hospital this afternoon after injuring his finger on the second day of England’s first Test with India.

Buttler picked up the injury in the field, diving to his left at gully attempting to take what would have been a spectacular catch to dismiss Virat Kohli.

Dom Bess has taken Buttler's place in the field Dom Bess has taken Buttler's place in the field
The ECB confirmed the injury, saying that Buttler had travelled to a local hospital near Edgbaston to have the x-ray. Dom Bess, who made his debut in England’s last Test series against Pakistan earlier in the summer, has been on the field in his absence.

During Tea, England's management confirmed that there was no fracture, but that Buttler is unlikely to return today, and will continue to ice the injury.

I think Eng will win. Putting 250 in 3rd inning should be much easier than chasing 250 in 4th inning. Eng may not do that well, but they have a long batting line up. 1-2 batsmen need to score to get to 250.

I think Eng will win. Putting 250 in 3rd inning should be much easier than chasing 250 in 4th inning. Eng may not do that well, but they have a long batting line up. 1-2 batsmen need to score to get to 250.

Yeah 250 should not be difficult for England.

Bairstow and Buttler are the real dangers down the order. Not often will you get Buttler out for nothing; if the top five get a decent enough start, Buttler can come in and cause severe damage with quick runs. India is up against it and need a miracle to win from here on. If not for Kohli, they might have been looking at a very heavy defeat here

Have said it many times that other then Kohli the rest of the Indian batting line up is nothing special at all. Had England not dropped Kohli would have had a 100 lead at least. Chasing is always difficult in the decisive innings so I still expect us to win here providing we can get a 300 plus lead.

PP's own self proclaimed sharpshooter and defender of Islam and Pakistan.

Bairstow and Buttler are the real dangers down the order. Not often will you get Buttler out for nothing; if the top five get a decent enough start, Buttler can come in and cause severe damage with quick runs. India is up against it and need a miracle to win from here on. If not for Kohli, they might have been looking at a very heavy defeat here

Yah, I saw some part of game early and then had some other things to do. Kohli's knock may raise expectations, but he can't score that way in each inning. If Eng puts up 250-300 runs, I doubt Indians will be able to chase it. Anyway, a good test so far despite poor catching from both sides.

Based on what I have seen , Vijay+Rahane+Rahul can score some runs, but it gets harder when batting in 4th inning. Earlier I thought Indians had luck in their side and had a great time to bat on 2nd day without clouds. Then cloud came and made this test a good one. If clouds stay away tomorrow then Indians will be done and dusted. If clouds are present then game could get interesting.

"If this happens I will swim across the Charles River! In winter!" -- OZGOD on NZ batting 6 sessions

Four things we learned from the second day of England’s first Test with India

Ben Stokes, Virat Slowly and slip-ups: Four things we learned from the second day of England’s first Test with India1) Stokes – England’s second-best swing bowler?

It’s both a gift and a curse that Stokes is perhaps the most versatile fast bowler England currently have. He can bang it in on his natural length, just short of good, and bowl dry. He can rough batsmen up with bouncers. In white-ball cricket, he can fire in yorkers​ at the death, although as Carlos Brathwaite will attest, with not entirely unqualified success. But perhaps his most exciting and underrated guise comes when the ball is swinging.

Stokes the swing king is glimpsed only rarely in this country, and hardly at all abroad. But against Australia at Trent Bridge in 2015 (6-36), the West Indies at Lord’s in 2016 (6-22) and again here, Stokes showed that he can move the ball through the air like no other. According to CricViz data, he swung the ball 1.654 degrees, more than either Stuart Broad or James Anderson, widely regarded as the best swing bowler of his generation. Moreover, Stokes’s natural front-on action makes him England’s only natural in-swing bowler, allowing him to attack the stumps with vicious late swerve.

So how should England use him? The fact that Stokes still bowled 47 per cent of his balls short, more than any other bowler, suggests that he still regards the full in-swinger as an occasional weapon rather than a stock delivery – and he also averages less with the short ball than the full ball in Test cricket. And obviously, there’s more to being a great swing bowler than simply swinging it loads. But when the ball is moving around in the air, Stokes offers England a valuable alternative option, as India discovered to their cost here.

2) Virat Slowly – Kohli reins himself in

It’s a measure of Kohli’s prolific genius that as brilliant as this century was, it would still struggle to make his top five of all time. You’d have his 100 off 52 balls against Australia against Jaipur in there, the brilliant knock against England at Pune, at least two of his four IPL centuries and probably his 141 at Adelaide too, a knock which Kohli himself describes as his best. But as an emblem of his ability to conquer conditions – and his own history – there can have been few more important than this.

Kohli​ reached his 50 in a round 100 balls, having been dropped once – he’d be dropped once more soon after – and edged numerous balls down or through the slips. But what distinguished him from most of his top-order team-mates was his restraint: his percentage of attacking shots during those first 100 balls was just six per cent, his lowest ever, against a career average of 23 per cent. After the wicket of Ravi Ashwin, however, he went to town. His percentage of attacking shots after the fall of the seventh wicket was 49 per cent, and he scored 82 of India’s last 92 runs. They say a great batsman can move through the gears. Perhaps the greatness of Kohli is that he can simply switch from first to fifth at the flick of a switch.

3) England slip up again

Dawid Malan’s two drops of Kohli and Alastair Cook’s elementary shelling of Hardik Pandya were costly, but they shouldn’t have been surprising. Since the start of 2015, according to the table below, only India and Bangladesh have dropped a higher percentage of catches in the slips than England.

You could argue that the ball moves around a lot more in England, making slip catching a more hazardous business. But the drop in sharpness from the team that snatched almost everything during the 2015 Ashes after Trevor Bayliss’s ruthless Spanish boot-camp is pronounced. “You can’t dwell on these things too much,” Sam Curran argued after day two. The evidence suggests England should try dwelling on it a little more.

4) Batting last may not be the disadvantage everyone thinks it is

Sanjay Bangar, India’s batting coach, insisted that the game was “in a very good balance”. And the late wicket of Cook to a vicious ripper from Ashwin offered two conflicting conclusions: firstly that England’s advantage had all but evaporated, and secondly that the amount of turn on offer would ultimately make England strong favourites in the fourth innings.

The data doesn’t suggest that. Since 2000, Edgbaston has actually been a very decent place to bat in the fourth innings. An average runs per wicket of 33 is actually five runs higher than it is in the third innings, and teams score their runs at a quicker rate too. Fourth-innings teams have also won four of the last five Tests here.

The most recent relevant example is from 2008, when England’s lead of 280 against South Africa was perceived to be more than enough on a dusty fourth-day Edgbaston pitch that was beginning to turn appreciably for Monty Panesar. Instead, the quick outfield and easy-paced wicket helped South Africa to a record chase on this ground, with Graeme Smith scoring a magnificent unbeaten 154. Panesar turned the ball plenty, but without much bounce or pace, he wasn’t a threat, bowling 33 overs and taking just two wickets.

A salutary tale for Joe Root’s England, who will likely need a lead well in excess of 300 to feel remotely secure of victory.